Mr. Alan Tennyson:

That is exactly right. This is the reason there are two organisations here with the committee today, namely, the Irish Society for Behaviour Analysis, and the division of behaviour analysis of the Psychological Society of Ireland. Essentially, the way the field has grown is that people with different undergraduate degrees, for example in nursing and social care or pharmacy - we have supervised pharmacists in the past - have gone on to study behaviour analysis without another organisation that would block their progression to professional practice. We want the field to be broad, inclusive, and to include additional disciplines. This is why we have two organisations: one for those with an undergraduate degree in psychology and one for those who have undergraduate degrees in different disciplines. This probably reflects what is happening and is likely to happen at a European Union level. Dr. Aoife Mc Tiernan at the University of Galway is president of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis. We have very close links with our European colleagues and our colleagues in the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis, SBA. Together with those organisations we are working on standards for training and supervised practice and experience, as well as ethical standards that can be met at a European Union and UK level, with national regulation for the profession at a national level. This is how we hope behaviour analysis will develop in the future.